Rev. Mark Gruber, a Benedictine monk and former professor at Saint Vincent's College, was fired last year after the school accused him of downloading underage gay porn on a shared computer. Did the school knowingly accuse an innocent man?

Gruber's firing last fall drew widespread objections—many people had access to the computer in question, and a police investigation found that the models that were viewed weren't underage. Despite that, the school pressed on. Gruber had publicly criticized the school's administration in 2008, and now he alleges that they were out to get him ever since.

Inside Higher Ed reports that a new lawsuit by Gruber contains evidence that the school knew he was innocent, even as they pushed ahead to toss him out of his job and force him to seek treatment as a sex offender. How did they know? Because someone else confessed.

Advertisement

The most dramatic new piece of information contained in Father Mark's legal complaint, though, is that in December 2009, an employee of Saint Vincent came forward to officials of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, to testify under oath that "he, unbeknownst to Father Mark, utilized the subject computer to download homosexual pornography precisely during the week of July 20, 2009 and was solely responsible for the subject pornography." The unidentified witness, the lawsuit states, had told Father Mark about his actions in confession, but the priest had kept the information confidential, "even to the point of losing his job, his priestly faculties, and allowing his reputation to be maligned."

The school knew all that, but never even bothered to tell Gruber, much less to stop persecuting him. There's probably a Bible verse that's appropriate here.